My Theory of Relativity

…Or, What is Relative When Talking About Relatives.

I am working on a series currently for DownsGenealogy.com on the ancestors of Thankful Doane Smith. She was the granddaughter of Rachel Doane, but Rachel’s parentage does not seem to be recorded anywhere. This has hounded researchers for quite some time. When searching indexes in journals and bulletin boards we often find the question posed, but never the answer.

I think I may have this mystery finally solved, but right now it is just a theory. My case for the solution is entirely circumstantial and not on very firm ground. But I have no contradictory or problem loose ends either. It’s neat, attractive, and any other solution I’ve held up next to it has quickly crumbled. I am currently looking for further evidence to support this theory and at the same time, trying to find disproof of it. Both items do not seem to be coming forward at this time.

My quandary is thus: at what point do I publish my theory? Do I publish it now? The advantages of publishing it are that others can help in proving, or disproving it. Maybe someone has been working on this problem and has more, or different, information than I do. Others can also share opinions or point out faults in my logic.

There is a considerable downside to publishing a theory. It is often taken as fact and used by others in there work. Often there is no notation that this is just someone else’s working theory. It is common to see it uploaded as part of family trees on sites like Ancestry.com or a similar place. As others find it, they incorporate into their own family trees they are working on and soon there are more cases on the web of the material as fact than the truth that it is just a possibility. What is a novice researcher to do in this situation? Does he believe the many, or does he listen to the one or two, if he even finds them, who are telling the truth?

So, do I publish my theory about my relatives, or not?

Want to Blow Your Mind?

I currently go back about 12 generations on Cape Cod through my grandmother Helen (Hopkins) Downs to my immigrant ancestors. Every time I go back a generation, there will be twice as many people in that generation than the previous one I researched. In the 12th generation back from me, there should be 4096 people. In all 12 generations combined there should be a total of 8187. I guess I’m lucky inasmuch that this all took place on the Cape where the population wasn’t large enough to support such a family tree. With much remarrying into families, my numbers are considerably smaller.

Going the other way can be even more cumbersome. In the previous instance, everyone has two, and only two, parents. But going forward, especially in earlier generations, there were usually a lot of kids. My great grandfather Thomas Downs had 6 sons. After this, things slowed down and each of those sons had on average 2 children. Thomas and Anna had 12 grandchildren. But in earlier centuries, a large family was the rule.

The Mayflower Society has published books containing the first five generations of many of the Mayflower passengers. A look at the total individuals covered in each of these books might give you an idea of how families grew rapidly back then. My ancestor, Stephen Hopkins, had 534 descendants after 5 generations. This includes his own generation of one, and goes up to his great great grandchildren. My ancestor Thomas Rogers on the other hand had only 308. Neither Stephen nor Thomas is even close to being in the running for having the most or the fewest. Poor John Billington only had 125, whereas John Howland had an even 500 through just his oldest child, daughter Desire Howland. John had 10 children so we can see that his progeny over the same five generations will be thousands when it is all finally tallied.

People often begin genealogical projects and define the scope of such projects without any consideration to these numbers. I recently read a statistic somewhere that one in ten Americans can trace their ancestry back to a Mayflower passenger. Suddenly, it is not such an exclusive club.